I assumed the NYT would check out a thing that reads like a parody before presenting it as real, but commenters immediately jumped on it. The second comment, from David Begley, is "Fake letter published by the Fake News."

And Amadeus 48 wrote:

This letter is a send-up all the way. It is masterful trolling that exposes the idiocy of the Sugars and their phony empathy shop. The right answer is always vote Dem and feel guity. Boo-hoo, poor little you.

I check back to the original column to see if the NYT has backed off on the authenticity of the letter. No. The thing is still sitting there in its apparently serious form that was enough to cause me to set my suspicion to the side. I've been asked a hundred times on this blog, why are you still reading the NYT? The idea is that I should have at long last had enough, that I should have by now experienced a definitive enlightenment and cried out that's it and thrown the thing aside never to pick it up again.

But without the NYT where would I go? I need a normal newspaper, and this is as close as I can get. There is no steppingstone to leap to. I need an American newspaper that covers the news comprehensively and in depth and has at least something to do with the ideals of professional journalism. I deal with the limitations by blogging, and blogging keeps me looking for and at the limitations.

What's the alternative? I can only see going into full abstention mode, like the man described in the wonderful NYT article, "The Man Who Knew Too Little" (but he did it because Donald Trump became President; I'd be doing it because the news is too tainted to read anymore).

160 comments:

This covers it for me. I no longer believe that the Times serves any purpose other than to print Democratic Party propaganda. The Times is a handy guide to that propaganda. I've given up thinking that independent, professional journalism exists (and I think it was a manufactured illusion that it did ever exist).

Amusing in a way that you won't give up the ghost, since blogs like yours are really what blew the fake professional journalist pose of the Times and its brethren to hell.

Please keep reading the NYT for all the reasons you give in this post. I have many friends who have adopted a similar attitude. One of them says that you can not read it and be uninformed, or you can read it and be misinformed.

As long as you are aware they are trying to corrupt your impressions, than I suppose. But the question is 'how much information are you missing because the NYT doesn't want you to know about it?'

Now expand this to an electorate who does NOT have the time of a very curious and comprehensive RETIRED law professor.

So I find their editorial board almost evil...but certainly racist.

To deliberately misinform the public as journalists is against the very description of the job function.

Actually, I have to thank Ms. Althouse for doing the heavy lifting of reading the Times. What she posts generally (drag queens and Dylan aside) generally informative and interesting, PARTICULARLY her analysis of same.

"I need an American newspaper that covers the news comprehensively and in depth and does something that has at least something to do with the ideals of professional journalism."

Oh my. Althouse agonistes. I am a dedicated reader and commenter, and I think you are a national treasure, aberrant view of men in shorts notwithstanding. But, really? The episode of NYT Editorial Board Member Sarah Jeong's 8,000,000 racist tweets didn't give you a suspicious feeling? Their failure to EVER apologize for Walter Duranty? Their relentless drumming for the Democrats and the Deep State? Some suggestions, with more to follow from your other readers, I have no doubt

Drudge, you already do.Instapundit, you already do.Breitbart, you have said you don't like. But do you really think that James Delingpole is insufficently heavy intellectually?UK Guardian - Lefty, but more honest about USA politics, meaning not covering for DemocratsUK Telegraph - Lefty, but more honest about USA politics, meaning not covering for DemocratsReal Clear Politics - At least you see editorials from both sides of an issue, often side by sideZero Hedge - where bankers are always jumping out of windows tomorrowThe Wall Street Journal - Kimberly Strassel at least is tryingSharyl Attkisson - former target of the Deep StateMichael Totten - great in depth stuff on foreign issues

Oddly, I've got the same problem as the prof. A few months ago, I began to wonder: "Where in the hell can I find an unbiased report of the news?"

I looked and looked and came up empty.

A number of people, including the editor of the local newspaper, suggested the Associated Press. I did a contract job some years ago with the AP at its HQ and played in a garage band with AP editors and staff. Ferocious Republican haters. The usual hatred of the white blue collar middle class that is now an emblem of pride for Democrats. Gay worship. The works.

*2018-08-14) — After a white supremacist anniversary rally in Charlottesville, Va., turned out to be a bust, one participant said he’ll return to full-time internet trolling, but added that he feels “a little blue, and that’s a color I can’t stand either.”

@ Shouting Thomas - I came to that conclusion back in the 1970s. It is easier to read foreign newspapers, as they are invariable trying to be critical of the USA and its leadership. But you can't trust anything.

No, that's not what I'm asking. I do already go all over, as my blog clearly shows, and in any going all over approach, one of the places will be the NYT, because I find a lot at the NYT. So going all over is not a way to be done with the NYT.

I have a subscription to the digital edition. On occasion I get pissed enough to cancel it but the NYT is clever enough to make it nearly impossible to figure out how. LOL. So I pay on. And sometimes read the business section and the book reviews although the latter "section" of the Sunday paper has turned to crap. The Professor should consider the WSJ and the Financial Times as two dailies that are reasonably straight. The Times' hatred for Trump is comical. Reading just the headlines gives their game away. Oddly they seem to think hatred for the President is evidence of intellectual status and hire people to write the silliest opinion pieces in which we learn tha, for instance, that security clearances are a first amendment right. One has to laugh.

Suppose a fundamentalist Christian world view had taken over the Times and every article was written from this perspective, written with the intention of demonstrating the fundamentalist virtue of the writer and the institution, written to reassure the readers that their beliefs are indeed the proper ones and written for the purpose of evangelizing the faith.

That's what has happened at the Times, only it's a different religion.

As you know from your years in a law school classroom, the most powerful and revealing statement is the unanswered question. The NYT is full of unasked and unanswered questions. You ask them. Keep it up.

I finally cancelled my subscription to the NYT during the 2008 campaign. NYT pulled out all the stops to sink McCain. They'd already tried to smear HW, and leaked the SWIFT terrorist financing story. Switched to WSJ, which covers global stories & issues, has reporters and columnists who can write well. It's conservative but not neverTrump, and has intelligent alternative POVs (e.g., Gallstone). Yes, @rhhardin the WSJ layered on a women's fashion sensibility but no one is forcing me to read that.

I don't go to it or the WaPo, beyond the free articles they offer each month, and I used to read both religiously. Don't miss them at all. Why would I read or trust a paper that ran an article on a Pet Psychic, or that didn't state clearly it had an occultist as a religion editor? They're NewAge occultists fucking with us. That's why they can't change their editorial positions: it goes against their beliefs.

Corporate media was certain they had a monopoly. 'Alternative media' arose from the ashes, and were able to gain a foothold due to hosting platforms like Youtube.

Now, alternative media have overtaken corporate media in digital, and they are fighting back by forcing hosting platforms to ban the competition.

Alex Jones was unpersoned not because he was so unpopular, but because he was. Banning conservatives has less to do with ideology than with the bottom line. CNN has a entire division dedicated to deplatforming their competition. Successfully, I might add.

Want a real newspaper? The Wall Street Journal. Vibrant (and conservative) editorial voice, great arts coverage (theater critic regularly reviews American Players Theater). The news side is straight up. Not a Trump bot but suffers not from Trump Derangement Syndrome. BTW: I do subscribe to the NY Times, as well. And The Nation! As well as Weekly Standard.

As the comments here show, Trump has won on this issue. No one here considers the NYT "the news" anymore, we recognize it as "fake news," i.e. "news" which must be fisked and decoded for the real news, if it is there at all.

The angst is misplaced. Any dispassionate look at newspapers over the last 300 years shows that the NYT is in the curve. There has never been a newspaper that played anything straight. They are in the business of making money by getting your attention and money by telling you tales. Since you do a daily blog you almost have to read every day. But the best way to figure out what’s important or true is to read once a week and keep track of the trend of the lies.

The NYT ran an article on Louise Hay, "the Queen of the New Age" where they stated she runs a cult and said the Jews brought the Holocaust on themselves, and - that was it. The full extent of their "reporting". No investigation of the cult and what they're up to. No curiosity about who's in it. No questions for Jewish leaders about Hay's views. It was just, basically, "Meet Louise Hay" and then "move on" as NewAger's say.

That's not "journalism" and the newspaper that would run it isn't valuable - except to the NewAge - is my take on them.

I assumed the NYT would check out a thing that reads like a parody before presenting it as real

This is laughable, of course. But regarding news sources, the more, the better. Foreign press, local papers from many states. If one relies heavily on the NYT and the WaPo, one is not just under-informed but ill-informed.

@ Readering - anyone with a mind knows that human beings are inherently inaccurate. The problem with the NYT is the BIAS. I signed up for Twitter yesterday just to get Donald Trump's tweets in real time. I signed up for Lady Gaga too, just for the entertainment value. Twitter promptly blocked me. I guess the combination of the two was more than its algorithms could handle.

I haven't read the NYT (those g**damn traitors--just read Bill Keller's "justification" for the SWIFT exposure) in years, so I can't compare, but the WSJ news pages are pretty comprehensive and not too irritating for a regular conservative, and the op-ed stuff is often good. No Sarah Jeongs on staff, as far as I can tell. Occasional commentary from the left (Galstone, Blinder) usually sane. But offers less red meat for Althouse, so less bloggable.

Subscribe to stuff with a virtual credit card number. You set the dollar limit on the card and its expiration date. It can only be used by the first business that uses it, is its security feature (so it can't be stolen and used); but a side benefit is that the card will have expired by the time renewal comes up so nobody can keep charging you unless you give them another number.

Virtual credit cards don't work well with Amazon because Amazon keeps changing the business name that charges for this or that, and it's hard to keep up with the convention changes. The card comes up refused as a result and you're always chasing that down.

"I can only see going into full abstention mode,"....well, for what it's worth, I tried that and it lasted about 48 hrs. I've been in 'modified full-abstention' since then. I ended my NYT subscription but look at its page 1 every day - that's free, and it shows u what they consider the top stories and their Lede; and I had long learned theres nothing inside the other pages worth reading. I also look at the WAPO with the same goal but with a more DC swamp style. Given that, I feel I fully get the Liberal rant for the day. I subscribe to the WSJ for a quick dose of financial news and Kimberley Strassel. Then I spend real time searching thru a varied list of online sources for more detail and editorial input, beginning w/ RCP ( I'd say the List of 'Oso Negro' is pretty similar to my own) - this all leads to a varied and useful supply of references to other sources that have something of quality to add.....works well enough for me. But, of course, I'm no blogger, no way.

One has to read the New York Times, because it has so much importance in how other media outlets choose to cover stories and in framing the national debate. But--and this is especially true in the Trump era when the Times has abandoned even the pretense of journalistic objectivity--one has to triangulate the stories. Largely trust sourced quotes, but distrust paraphrases, distrust the reporters' gloss on stories, distrust unsourced quotes, and read enough other media and blogs to discover where the Times is trying to lead its readers astray. And of course revel in the Trump Derangement Syndrome, the gift that freaking keeps on giving. Their agita is my guilty pleasure.

"I assumed the NYT would check out a thing that reads like a parody before presenting it as real"

Why, at this late date, would you "assume" that? Sounds snarky, I realize, but it is a serious question.

In view of their past fabrications, their role in the culture war, their willingness to skew anything and everything, their hiring of Jeong, and so on and so forth, why couldn't you assume, just as easily, that they failed to check, or that they made it up themselves?

Although often skipped by Althouse some of the NYT in-depth reporting still holds water. For example the recent piece on the Carrier Indiana plant suffering from absenteeism, or the coverage of Clare Bronfman and the Nixivm scandal, or the Iraqi spy who infiltrated IS and payed with his life or the long magazine piece on global warming. Of course I read other sources: Asahi in Japan.BBC and the Guardian in England, Welt sometimes, and blogs ranging from The Daily Beast to The Gateway Pundit.They all suffer from the limitation of human perspective, but the responsible sources try their best to be objective. I will keep my ascription to the NYT and continue to exercise my freedom to roam other sources.

It's terrible. It's not in depth in any way. It doesn't surprise me with anything. It just feels like bad propaganda. I never go there, so maybe it changes, but it's not on my path.

"But do you really think that James Delingpole is insufficently heavy intellectually?"

Never noticed him. Put up a link to a specific piece you think is good.

"UK Guardian - Lefty, but more honest about USA politics, meaning not covering for Democrats"

This is one of the main tabs I open up when I take my path through the news other than the NYT. Definitely in my top 10 sites.

"UK Telegraph - Lefty, but more honest about USA politics, meaning not covering for Democrats"

Also one of my standard tabs.

"Real Clear Politics - At least you see editorials from both sides of an issue, often side by side"

Use this a lot, though not as much as Memeorandum.

"Zero Hedge - where bankers are always jumping out of windows tomorrow"

I simplify my life by letting other people care about finance. I do not follow finance at all and never have. I don't follow the stock market at all, and I don't worry about making or losing money in it. That's for other people.

"The Wall Street Journal - Kimberly Strassel at least is trying"

I don't like the difficulty of linking to something that requires a subscription, so I stopped subscribing and rarely read it. I'm not that interested in reading columnists interpreting things for me. I want to read news articles and articles about art, science, culture, etc. A wide array. Not someone telling me what's good and bad about Republicans and Democrats. I'll do that for myself straight from the news. People who are really into politics bore me and I am not good when bored. This whole blogging enterprise is set up to maximize what I can do and want to do and to finesse or avoid everything else. I can't think why I should care that "Kimberly Strassel .. is trying." Trying to do what? Form opinions accurately? What's that to me? Let everyone do a good job wherever they are, but what business is it of mine?

"Sharyl Attkisson - former target of the Deep State"

I follow her on twitter. I read her book.

"Michael Totten - great in depth stuff on foreign issues"

That's the other big thing that I avoid entirely: foreign policy. There's too much to it for me to have any value to add. I try to keep informed on these topics by scanning the NYT.

"As long as you are aware they are trying to corrupt your impressions, than I suppose. But the question is 'how much information are you missing because the NYT doesn't want you to know about it?'"

In 9th grade, the school made us take a subscription to the NYT and we studied it and were taught to read in a way that detected distortions and questioned what was missing and so forth. The notion that at my age, I'm not aware of such things.... This is the most basic thing about reading the news. I learned it when I was 14. It was taught systematically in my school. I remember learning about things like "glittering generalities" and selective quotation. It was quite entertaining. We had to subscribe to the NYT throughout high school, and the discussions were always about critical reading. I still remember reading the NYT report about Nixon taking the oath of office (1969, my senior year) and the description of the weather and comparing it to the weather description in the NYT story when JFK took the oath.

I can't think why I should care that "Kimberly Strassel .. is trying." Trying to do what? Form opinions accurately? What's that to me? Let everyone do a good job wherever they are, but what business is it of mine?

Mr. Ohr was until last year associate deputy attorney general. He began feeding information to the FBI from dossier author Christopher Steele in late 2016—after the FBI had terminated Mr. Steele as a confidential informant for violating the bureau’s rules. He also collected dirt from Glenn Simpson, cofounder of Fusion GPS, the opposition-research firm that worked for Hillary Clinton’s campaign and employed Mr. Steele. Altogether, the FBI pumped Mr. Ohr for information at least a dozen times, debriefs that remain in classified 302 forms.

All the while, Mr. Ohr failed to disclose on financial forms that his wife, Nellie, worked alongside Mr. Steele in 2016, getting paid by Mr. Simpson for anti-Trump research. The Justice Department has now turned over Ohr documents to Congress that show how deeply tied up he was with the Clinton crew—with dozens of emails, calls, meetings and notes that describe his interactions and what he collected.

"In 9th grade, the school made us take a subscription to the NYT and we studied it and were taught to read in a way that detected distortions and questioned what was missing and so forth. The notion that at my age, I'm not aware of such things.... This is the most basic thing about reading the news. I learned it when I was 14."

A military officer in the Navy did this for me, after I was already enlisted and out to sea, committed to defending my life in a conflict I didn't understand, just to get off the streets of Los Angeles. He broke it all down for me, until I could see how a story got from Washington, DC to me, unwillingly sitting on a ship heading to Iran. I've been hooked, ever since.

At 14, I took a field trip to a funeral home. I think it was to help us with any trauma from the daily shootings. (America didn't freak when it was blacks, like they do today with white kids.) I remember standing in a hallway with a lot of other children, and a dead white baby on one side of the hall and a dead elderly white woman on the other, wondering if they were going to come to life, like in "The Exorcist" or something. I didn't want to miss it.

I'm trying to pin down when I stopped reading it. It was a long time ago. I remember the price went up rapidly as my interest in it gradually diminished....... The Sunday Times used to be an antidote to Sunday afternoon blahs. People don't remember, but there used to be a time when boredom was a real problem in people's lives. Ennui was particularly bothersome on Sunday afternoons. I knew ways of getting through the night, but Sunday afternoons were difficult to negotiate. The Sunday Times helped me through some of the most boring moments of my life. Within the thick folds of the the Sunday Times, you could generally find something to read that was marginally more interesting than watching the dispirited light fall through the blinds and just lay there on the floor.

even Michael Crichton, famous author and coiner of “Gell-Mann Amnesia,” still read the paper. in his words:Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

I once subscribed to the digital NYTimes but years ago they went several bridges too far for me. Admittedly, I generally have a quicker trigger than most. The only paper I subscribe to now is the digital WSJ. They haven't really pissed me off since Bret Stephens left. I do appreciate others picking out and sharing about stuff from places like the Washington Post and the NYTimes so that I can somewhat keep up with what's happening at those places without having to directly support them. With actors, movie makers, musical artists etc., I am often more forgiving because I don't expect them to be objective. If my estimation of their artistic value is high enough, I damn near forgive nearly every idiotic position they take. I don't really know how I judge. Quentin Tarantino pissed me off some way a few years ago, I don't remember exactly how now, and I don't support anything he does anymore even though I can't remember exactly what finally pushed me off him. But, I never was that crazy about him to begin with.

Next up: Paul Krugman shares an interesting investment opportunity with his readers, involving a Nigerian prince who contacted him via email. Crowdsourcing to help a struggling (but wealthy) would-be refugee.

I watch CNBC in the morning. If the world's going to end, it will have an impact on the market. Then I switch to local news to check the weather and the night's murders. Then I browse through Althouse and the internet. I've never had any trouble with high blood pressure.

I understand Professor. I used to get upset about people reading various outlets. However, as I get more and more news from reading bloggers; their primary source is stuff like the NYT and WaPo. There are not a lot of originating news platforms that can afford to do the indepth and comprehensive news stories, such as these existing behemoths of the Times and Post.

So what to do? In the past few months, I think you got it. You don't read these outlets as honest. Rather, you present their view as their view, and leave others to figure it out. Telling others what to think isn't what you have ever done. It's not what a good Professor does. You tell people how to think. And then when they are presented with information that sounds like nonsense; they know how interpret it and figure out what is happening. When they do that; the Times and Post become a mine, in which one can sift through the pieces to find useful nuggets of value.

Sharyl Attkisson has an excellent TV show, which by some miracle appears on our local NBC affiliate. Sharyl usually shows quite a bit of leg, but on her show about #metoo she wore a black mid-calf number that wouldn't have looked out of place on an Italian grandmother.

I just finished reading A World on Fire by Amanda Fireman. The book details some of the British reaction to our Civil War. The London Times got it completely wrong and was sympathetic to the Confederate cause.

The Washington Times used to cover a huge amount of national government and foreign news, particularly about Korea (yes I know why) and China. Plus they had every syndicated conservative columnist known to man and many comic strips not in the Post.

Did you ever smoke, Althouse? Lots of people did that for almost a lifetime, too.

*looks into one of many possible futures*

One year, five months, twelve days - header

First, they made me angry about billing when my credit card number changed, then I left town for awhile and didn't feel like reading a newspaper for some reason. Dropped it for three months and started back. Next time I quit, I just felt better. Not sure why. Never went back. I don't feel any less well informed.

There are no stacks of magazines in my traditional barber shop. The barber is retired from the USMC. Even the old men are reading their phones while we wait. 2020 looms.

I think Dear Abby set a standard for advice columnists which was to be very aware of the potential fakery and to claim to have a great instinct for telling the real from the fake. It was a mark of distinction that she flaunted, as I remember (without doing any research).

Only trust news sources that link to the original, cited documents.If websites do not provide links to the source documents, they cannot be trusted.Links are nearly free so anybody who resists giving them IS A PROPAGANDIST.

I got a little bit of that in one class in college, that taught me to ask what was the viewpoint of the author. Why were they writing this.

Later I learned to ask, why is this person being quoted?

I’m a pretty voracious news reader, but I feel in the dark in many areas.

LA economy is one. I see lots of construction around, yet Ca only added 800 jobs?

What really disillusioned me about the press was their praising the economy under Saint Obama, while I could see otherwise.

The fundamental issue is advertising used to pay the bills, and Craigslist killed a lot of that. And then Google / Facebook took most of the rest.

The LA Times is a shadow of its former self in number of pages. I grew up reading it, but no more.

It’s interesting to talk to my Dad, and he says he read nothing about X in the LA Times, Bloomberg, Time Magazine, The Week, and The Economist. The Feinstein spy scandal was an example for a few days. Amazing how the msm buried news, by not covering it.

The headache with Twitter is they are shadowbanning, including probably Atkinson.

Info galactic is a promising alternative to Wikipedia, and it has a news aggregator. It’s steadily improving.

EXAMPLES:Links to BEA data are a pretty good sign. It is dense so nobody can write about it all. But it shows readers the analyst is comfortable with readers fact checking their work.

Links to .pdf documents filed in court are a sign the writer is able to credibly establish a point.

Look backward at the prior predictions of websites. Many people dismiss Glenn Reynolds but his projections usually are within shouting distance of what has happened over time. Zerohedge is wildly inconsistent. The NYT is reliably wrong. Apply appropriate discount factors accordingly.

Ann said..."I simplify my life by letting other people care about finance. I do not follow finance at all and never have. I don't follow the stock market at all, and I don't worry about making or losing money in it. That's for other people."

Maybe that's a good thing. At least you are not losing/absconding with other people's money.

Now me, I have a WSJ and a MyYahoo page (mostly for stock quotes/news) open in separate tabs, along with RealClearPolitics, Althouse, and some others that vary.

I once read the Bible in a simple way, taking things at face value. A theological degree taught me to read the Bible in a critical way with a 'hermeneutic of suspicion.' It is only in recent years now that I have begun to read the Bible with a 'second naivete', hungry again to hear a message for my daily life.

I have been going through a similar experience in reading the news. There was a time when I would have come to the New York Times and like newspapers in a simple way, taking things at face value. But now I read them in a critical way, a suspicious way; I can no longer read them naively. So now I largely abstain from them; it simply takes too much mental energy to sift out the few fragments of fact from the wide flow of bias and agenda.

Problem is, I doubt that I will ever come back to the news the way I came back to the Bible. Newspapers are not a sacred text in the way the Bible is (or the sacred texts of other faiths). There is no need for me to come back to the newspapers after losing my trust in the world they present.

If ya want a good letter to make editorial comments about, sometimes easiest thing is ta just just write the letter yerself.

But Althouse, I much appreciate yr excerpts from the NYT and WaPo. They are too important to ignore, and too poisonous to be taken at full strength. Really! A valuable service. One of the features I come here for.

I read the local rags aloud to Mrs. G. a'morning. A.P. is the best source of examples for..politically slanted "newsworthy" determinations;..politically slanted word applications ("slashed", "slumping", "skyrocketing", "much maligned", etc.);..unsupported declarations ("many people are saying ...")..straw man and other offenses against logic;..oblique entry to topic, first and last paragraphs are not precis and summary;..excruciatingly convoluted sentences;..misplaced or missing antecedents;..subject-verb number (singular/plural) mismatches;..outright misspellings;....

" Rob said...One has to read the New York Times, because it has so much importance in how other media outlets choose to cover stories and in framing the national debate."

If Pravda had had a free opposition within the Soviet Union (thought experiment) then people like Althouse would have a historical precedent. It's sort of above-ground samizdat and where it goes, no one knows. But perhaps the NYT as it goes into full totalitarian mode isn't an entertaining rogue most of the time anymore. Perhaps Althouse is saying it's becoming too boring even on its arts, science and book pages along with its extreme-boring narrative lies which, yet, one must know. I can tell you that Eastern European art and culture in the Soviet years is very interesting to read about after working on learning the latest on the attempted soft coup, One of the points about that society is that propaganda did not work at all, no one believed, they were bored and, without a blogsphere, suppressed. Imagine your attitude toward the NYT without the blogosphere. That's what the people on the left have and notice that they are visiting psychiatrists to handle the resulting emotional condition. Maybe we should call it Totalitarian Derangement Syndrome - a condition which results when a previously free person is unable to consciously recognize creeping progressive derangement in the interpretation of reality presented by the news media but is able to unconsciously feel and fear their own long-term memory loss, their loss of history. The elected President of the United States, Donald Trump, keeps referring in a very vivid, evocative way to things American TDSers have forgotten and this is why the fear the condition generates focuses on him.

Blogger Birkel said...The WSJ? Former home of Glenn Simpson? Hard pass on the idea that the WSJ is a better paper than a roll of Charmin.

The business-related news has little to no bias, except when it might reflect on a broader policy issue. The editorial/opinion pieces must be read with some knowledge of who the author is, what their viewpoint usually reflects and what agenda they have.

"The two stories are about more than political back-scratching. Both [Cult leaders Jim] Jones and [Yusef] Bey were never seriously investigated until late in the game. Jones ran a string of rest homes and foster care facilities that he milked for income. He sheared off pension checks from his elderly followers and sold their possessions in exchange for a promised-land journey to Guyana, where their lives ended. There was no official inquiry until Rep. Leo Ryan went to Guyana in 1978 to check on temple members at the behest of their worried families. That mission unhinged Jones, who oversaw the forced deaths of some 900 followers, including his own suicide.

Bey, who died from cancer in 2003, was a less spectacular saga. His business enterprises brought him respect and standing. His troops chased off drug dealers, which led City Hall and police higher-ups to protect him from investigation. If that sounds like a defensible bargain, you're forgetting the people raped, abused and killed by Bey's soldiers.

There's an age-old question always asked when a monster falls: What have we learned to avoid a repeat? Judging from these two stories, there's a clear answer. Absolutely nothing."

Your regular reading of the New York Times is one of the most entertaining and informative things you do. I get the sense from some of your commenters that if you didn't provide this service they would never encounter an opinion different from their own.

Ernest Prole asserts: Your regular reading of the New York Times is one of the most entertaining and informative things you do. I get the sense from some of your commenters that if you didn't provide this service they would never encounter an opinion different from their own.

If I want opinions, I'll ask for them. If I want news, I'll avoid the NYT.

I dropped my wife off at the Gym, and went to library for an hour, and read the NYT.

Its astounding. Some large, evidently well written articles on Turkey and other foreign policy matters.

And then when it comes to Trump and domestic policy - complete crap.

I love the endless stories about how Trump's "Trade war" have hurt this or that business. I don't remember ANY New York Times stories about how NAFTA and all the other Bad trade deals were destroying American businesses or factories. Except, for a couple "globalization has hurt this small town, but its all for the greater good" articles.

If truly tiring of reading the NYT bubble, and seeing the same "taint" everyday in whatever they write, and not knowing where else to turn, why not choose to go entirely random for a month?

Pull up the ---- Post and the ---- Times from some metropolis other than NY. Read some "provincial" article/non-opinion piece about some matter that pertains sufficiently to their readers that the newspaper deemed it worthwhile to run. There are 50 states and lots of major cities - you could choose a different one every few days.

Sure, the story might not always have the names "Ohr" or "Mueller" etc in them, but chances are that there are interesting articles pertaining to some component of economic activity, cultural trend or govt policy that has nation-wide aspects, despite the story coming from a Des Moines or Chicago address. Which I presume is what you are interested in processing.

Who is to say that someone based in a Dallas, Miami, San Diego, Kansas City, Helena office cannot be as cogent as an NYTer writing about issues that are of interest to Althousian Americans, and a small subset of irrelevant Canadians? You said in a previous post something about how time works for those who are retired - there's no need for you to keep to the NYT of it is becoming a time waster.

You can sit in the coffeehouse, look down at the cup and the paper, and frown a little, wondering if that was really worth it. Or you can go to that new place by the river, and try their dark roast, and play the field! (Newspaper-wise)

I finally stopped the Washington Post because I counted anti-Trump headlines every day and 15 was just too much. I decided to try the NYT instead, 3 months was enough. I read a lot of blogs and news online with links to them all.

Unfortunately most of the so called provincial papers are owned by the conglomerate publishers. Our local Caller Times is a repeat of USA Today, our local TV news parrot the ABC, CBS, NBC newscasts, no questions asked, just repeat their videos. Even C-span Washington Journal has become so biased I find it hard to watch.

Fortunately, I am old and retired so I can spend much of my time at the computer searching out original videos of news stories to see what was really said and the context in which it was said. I thought the tone of voice Cuomo used saying his infamous words last week was actually worse than the words he uttered. Context, tone of voice, whether it is an answered question, those mean a lot not seen in columns in newspapers.

I stopped regularly reading the NYT way back in (about) 2004 when I caught them in a bald faced lie smearing Karl Rove. I don’t have any particular affection for Rove, but I was so disgusted by the incident that I stopped reading them for news.

I think Dear Abby set a standard for advice columnists which was to be very aware of the potential fakery and to claim to have a great instinct for telling the real from the fake. It was a mark of distinction that she flaunted, as I remember (without doing any research).

Ann Landers had to deal with some pranksters from Yale on more than one occasion.

Ann could do everything suggested here and still not get anything reliable. Here's an example of what I mean: Why fake news is bad for your health. This problem of America no longer having standards is true across all media formats, in most areas of inquiry, so the only answer is to arm herself intellectually. Especially if - at this point - she hasn't noticed how out of control this is before. We're, like, 20 years into this now.

I felt the same a few years ago about the New York Times, and the same way about the LA Times a few years before that. I now go on those websites very rarely. The noise to relevant or interesting information became too large to be worth sifting. Even your links did not provide any desire to return.

I love Black Lamb and Grey Falcon more than any book should be loved, really... But I do keep in mind that when you look in the dictionary for the phrase 'unreliable narrator', well whadda ya know there's a picture of Rebecca West.